From WNYC Studios, I'm Brian Lerer.

This is my daily politics podcast.

It's Thursday, March 20th.

It's the Brian Lairer show on WNYC.

Good morning, everyone.

Today marks two months of the Trump administration, January 20th to

March 20th. A New York Times article focuses on one of the big picture ways to look at what the

administration has been about trying to cripple the left, aiming not to just implement policies

that Trump voters, or at least Trump and his inner circle think are good for the country,

but also to do with the article calls hobble Democrats' ability to compete in elections for years to come,

also to financially hurt firms, law firms, that work on behalf of Democrats.

Shane Goldmacher, national political correspondent for the New York Times, wrote that article

and joins me now.

We'll also touch on his recent piece about California's Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom

and MAGA leader Steve Bannon finding common ground over a few things,

including no tax cuts for the very rich and general

suspicion of Elon Musk when Bannon was on Newsom's podcast recently. Shane, thanks for joining us.

Welcome to WNYC. Thanks for having me on. In your article, you acknowledge that it's not unusual for

partisans to push for investigations

into political groups on the other side of the aisle, but Trump and his team are defying

the usual norms around that. Where would you start to describe what they're doing that's new?

Yeah, I think it's sort of pulling together all the things that are happening all at once

...